Stock Exchange
Attempts to organise an exchange in Kharkov began in the 1860s. In October 1866 a group of Kharkov entrepreneurs — among them Oleksiy Kyrylovych Alchevsky — formed an exchange committee; on 4 October 1868 Emperor Alexander II approved the Charter of the Kharkov Exchange. That same year the foundation of the exchange building was laid on Pavlovska Square, but marshy ground forced the site to be abandoned. For the next eight years the exchange society met in the open air — at the corner of Mykolaivska and Torgova Squares, in front of the "Moscow Hotel" — and the question of a proper building was shelved.
By the early 1870s the question returned, and in 1881 a pavilion exchange rose on the corner of Mykolaivska and Torgova Squares (by Armenian Lane) to a design by the Kharkov architect Boleslav Mikhailovsky — a classical composition raised on a high plinth, with the silhouette of an ancient Greek temple. The building became the financial centre of Kharkov's commercial elite: by January 1903 the shares of 13 local companies were quoted on the Exchange — among the deals concluded then were 887 shares of the Sablino-Znamensky sugar-factory partnership and 304 shares of the Kharkov brewing society "Nova Bavariya" (New Bavaria). Pre-revolutionary press into the early 20th century described the Exchange as one of Kharkov's ornaments.
In the Soviet era the exchange was moved to more spacious premises on Tevelev Square, 13 (today Constitution Square), and the old building was handed over to the Lenin Aero Club, which opened on 1 January 1925 on the foundations of the pre-war Kharkov branch of the All-Russian Aero Club — where Russia's pioneer aviators Sergey Utochkin and Ivan Zaikin had given demonstration flights to the people of Kharkov. A Nieuport-XIV training plane — a gift from the 2nd Permanent Air Base of the VVS based in Kharkov — was mounted on the roof of the "antique" building; the great hall now held aviation lectures, chess matches, and rounds of "Vozdukhflot," a newly-invented air-combat board game, and the basement vaults where the exchange's safes had been kept were turned into an aircraft-modelling laboratory. The Aero Club only stayed three years: in 1928 the Exchange was demolished during the reconstruction of the central squares — officially to make room for a new tram line linking the square to the redrawn city centre.
